We are about to hit the super crazy season – in the next five weeks, there are five major triple A titles coming out. Tomorrow is Assassins’ Creed: Syndicate, next week is Halo 5: Guardians, after that on the 6th of November is Call of Duty: Black Ops III, on the 11th we get Fallout 4 and the week after that marks the return of Star Wars Battlefront. That’s possibly the best lineup I’ve ever seen in such a short span of time – it’s hard to call now, but it’s entirely possible that there are multiple Game of the Year candidates in that lineup.
And in that lineup is a game trying something a little different with its launch day events. That game would be Master Chief and Spartan Locke’s story in Halo 5: Guardians. Microsoft is starting to really push the hype train out of the station this week – there are plenty of people out there with the game as we speak. Twitch streamers, Youtubers, and press all got their copies over the weekend. That’s a pretty big cushion between early release copies and launch. My only personal experience with something similarly timed was with Skyrim – we got our copies at G4 two weeks early. What that means is that the initial launch content from those places should be really strong – not just reviews, but I would expect to see some more deep dives on particular portions of the gameplay, like the new Warzone or Breakout modes online. It also keeps the hype in mind – I’m sure they all have NDA’s signed so specifics can’t be discussed in public, but they can certainly talk about feelings about the game. That alone is pretty novel an idea from Microsoft – get the core base of the game engaged with it early, and hope that their hype spreads to the bigger market.
What I really think is interesting here though is the actual launch day festivities. Generally, with these huge games, we see launch parties and fan events. With first party games like this they get held at either first party stores, or at Gamestops in bigger cities. Every once in a while, you’ll see a studio rent out a theater or something like that. In this case, Microsoft is forgoing all that and doing it digitally. Huh? A digital party. Seems a little weird to me, but with streaming growing as quickly as it is, it kinda makes sense. Especially when you look at who’s doing it – Microsoft. They’ve been pushing the digital side on the Xbox One since launch, and two years later we’re starting to see it really bear some fruit. Now, do I think that this will be a rousing success – not really. Sure I expect people to tune it – maybe people on the fence about the game, or people waiting for their physical copies to install. But I am more interested in actually sitting down and playing a bunch of Halo again on the 27th. After the debacle that was Master Chief Collection, I am really hoping that 343 gets this right. The story looks solid – I like the idea of pushing four-player Co-op here. But what will really seal the deal is the multiplayer – if it has the same issues that MCC had, the series might have a real struggle regaining its audience. All signs point to the competitive scene being strong, and the actual multiplayer being a return to form, but it’s impossible to say for sure until we’ve played it for a couple weeks. Luckily we only have one more week to wait.
Infinite Lives 